South Korea World Champion in Computer Infections

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South Korea leads in many ways. It's got one of the world's
fastest average broadband speeds. It's got the highest standard
of living in mainland East Asia. It shares the world's most
hostile border with its evil twin North Korea.

According to a new report, South Korea also has the world's
highest percentage of infected computers.

In terms of the cleanest countries, Switzerland topped the list
with an 18 percent infection rate, followed by Sweden at 19
percent. The rest of the least infected were Norway, the United
Kingdom, Uruguay, Germany, Ireland, Finland, Hungary and the
Netherlands.

"The list of least infected countries is dominated by some of the
world's most technologically advanced nations, with the sole
exception of South Korea," noted Panda Labs technical director Luis Corrons
(who overlooked equally advanced Taiwan). "Even though there
may be other factors that influence these results, there seems
to be a clear connection between technological development and
malware infection rates."

A
study by a different company, Norway's Norman, a few months
ago put Finland as the cleanest country, and Albania, the poorest
country in Europe, as the "dirtiest."

But even that study found that rich South Korea had the
second-highest rate of infection, with well over 50 percent. (The
next three "dirtiest" were Guatemala, Vietnam and Indonesia, all
relatively poor.)

Rich but dirty

So what is it about South Korea? Why is a technologically
advanced, wealthy country such an outlier when it comes to
computer infections?

Neither Panda nor Norman would speculate, but let's go back to
that long, hostile border with North Korea, which separates two
countries still technically at war.

The computer systems of South Korean governmental, military and
commercial institutions are under constant attack.

In March 2011, 40 South Korean websites, including those of large
banks, government ministries and the presidential residence, were
knocked offline by a massive denial-of-service attack. That
same month,
malware embedded in pirated video games attacked systems at
one of South Korea's major airports.

When South Korean Internet users aren't worrying about their
northern neighbors, they have the Chinese and even themselves to
monitor. A huge data breach last year sent the
personal information of 35 million people — 70 percent of the
population — to hackers based in China.